


The Danbert Chronicles

by Capnim



Category: Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Autistic Herbert West (Re-Animator), Danbert, Dissociation, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, character study kind of, herb stims...., kinda angsty not too much though, nsfw at a later time not right yet tho, tbey are both confused and gay, this isn’t me projecting I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:13:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28081479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capnim/pseuds/Capnim
Summary: Dan threatens to move out and Herbert realizes just how much he wants him to stay.
Relationships: Daniel Cain/Herbert West
Kudos: 23





	The Danbert Chronicles

**Author's Note:**

> bear with me here I rarely write.... there’s like five danbert fans so I had to make content myself.  
> Srry if this is ooc or there’s spelling errors I wanted to rush to publish this

Herbert frowned and the lines around his mouth deepened, casting an eerie shadow on his face. He wasn’t making any progress and hadn’t for almost a week now, despite his best efforts— and using his reagent on himself— to stay awake and alert. 

He’d been unable to get any cadavers from the morgue as people were dying at a rate too few and far between for the doctors liking, and his test subjects had been yet again reduced to small animals he could find. 

The most he could manage to steal was an arm and a leg, which he shoved together and brought to life moments before, before throwing it behind the wall, with the others, and sealing it again. 

He always got the smallest prick of anxiety in the back of his mind when he had to do that.  
Flashbacks of an especially aggressive creation of his grasping the back of his coat as he turned away to grab a brick off the floor entered his mind. 

He could hear it scratch at the floor and at the bricks. He could hear it thud as it struggled to move, aimlessly and pathetically crawling along the floor. 

He frowned again. 

He didn’t have any reason to reanimate it. You’d think Herbert would be ontop or recording the effects of reagent on all of his creations, but sometimes he’d bring back a leg here and an arm there for the pure sake of boredom. The doctor liked to do the same when he needed to get his mind off of things, and today was no exception to one of these times. 

You wouldn’t expect Herbert to be upset for the reason he currently is though.  
A few days ago he had introduced the idea of reanimating Gloria, or Megan depending on which way you viewed it, to Dan, who didn’t want to entertain the idea at first. 

You wouldn’t know it but this actually upset West. And not in the way he usually gets upset as he tends to be neurotic, but a deeper, more genuine pain was being felt by the seemingly emotionless man. There was one thing that made him feel mortal, feel human, and that was the very man he was scared to look in the eyes now. 

Dan didn’t know it, but his threat of moving out still hung heavy over Herberts’ consciousness although he retracted it after the topic of reanimating his late fiancée was revealed to him. Dan leaving would throw off everything. 

For Herbert, this next experiment was it. This was it. Everything he had been working towards was this, his biggest accomplishment if he succeeded. He’d brought back animals, and humans, and even singular body parts, but never a reconstructed human. The fact he would choose Dans dead girlfriend spoke volumes. It said that Herbert not only wanted to involve Cain in the magnum opus of his biggest and greatest accomplishment, but he wanted it to benefit and center him. To thank him. 

In his own strange and slightly sick way, this was Herbert trying to confess to him.  
Herbert was metaphorically and literally holding his life’s work and a (his) heart in his hands, and giving it to the one person he felt deserved it. 

He was trying to tell him that he didn’t just need him to stay, but he wanted him to. 

In his own weird way, Herbert was trying to tell Dan he loved him.

He didn’t know how Dan would reply, especially considering he was introducing this idea after Dan threatened to move out. He was taking a huge risk doing this and he specially now. It horrified Herbert to think about what would happen if Dan left.  
He’d lose his right hand man, his accomplice, his partner in crime. He’d lose his partner.  
The way Herbert felt about Dan was never a topic spoken on, leaving the latter to guess and assume. There was no way to tell for sure. Herbert never tried to make it known that he had feelings for dan or that he was gay at all, and Dan never asked. 

It wasn’t like he didn’t show any signs at all however.  
He let his humanity show a little too much as he crouched over Daniel, wrapping a blanket around him and rubbing his shoulder to comfort him while he dissociated on the cold tiles. After Daniel gained the ability to focus and speak and then move, they shared a moment of prolonged eye contact. Herbert squeezed his shoulder in a silent “I’m here for you.”

He tried to convey that he was there for Dan, and by extension that he loved him on several occasions, never actually saying it but always trying to prove it with his actions. 

He never said it out loud, that would be too risky. Too vulnerable. What if Daniel got creeped out? What if he realized how he felt and didn’t feel the same? What if he left?  
He couldn’t let his selfish feelings ruin what they had. 

He did feel like these feelings were wrong. Not because he’s gay, he came too terms with this fact years ago. He felt like he didn’t deserve to have his feelings reincorporated. The amount of pain he felt he caused Meg, and by extension Daniel, was catastrophic. He felt like he already caused enough confusion in the mans life, and an unrequited love confession wouldn’t help. 

Herbert believed it’d be easier, and less painful, to just try and shove these budding emotions to the back of his mind like he always has.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t gnawing at the back of his mind. 

Why couldn’t he ignore it? Why wasn’t his work enough for him? What used to be intoxicating and all consuming for the man didn’t quite take up as much space as it used to in his mind. Was it still the main concern in his life? Yes, but something else was starting to preoccupy his time and thoughts. Something much more alive. 

What did they have? How did Dan feel about him? Herbert couldn’t tell, not only was the man autistic but he was emotionally stunted for no ones fault but his own. He wasn’t good at reading people. He definitely wasn’t good at dealing with romantic feelings either. Having not even had his first kiss yet, Herbert was definitely what you’d call inexperienced in every sense of the word. This wasn’t bothersome to the man until recently. 

His train of thought was cut off by Daniel coming down the stairs to the basement with just a few knocks on the upstairs door as a warning. 

He knew what that meant, Dan had gotten into the habit of making sure to check on him every few hours and even bring him meals sometimes on the days he was glued to his work. This wasn’t uncommon. 

He also knew that he couldn’t argue with Dan. Well, he could argue, but he couldn’t win at the end of the day if Dan had enough reason to be worried for his physical safety. 

He balanced him out in that way, always making sure he would take breaks and eat and shower. It wasn’t the easiest task but Dan wasn’t about to let his roommate return to the state he was in before they lived together. 

The doctors looks had rivaled his experiments, pale skin stretched over slim limbs and contrasting his dark eyes. It wasn’t the color of his irises that was dark, Dan noticing how the hazel orbs seemed to glisten when the man was especially manic and rattling off theory and insulting God, but the feeling he got when they stared into his own could be described as exposed and vulnerable. Dan felt naked under his gaze. Why was it comforting? 

In a way he couldn’t quite explain he couldn’t help but feel simultaneously safe and protected, as well as vulnerable when Herbert looked at him. 

Why did Herbert stare at him the way he did? It was a common enough occurrence for dan to take note of it. He would always catch the man staring at him. Why? He wondered if Herbert looked at him the same way he did the lifeless cadavers that had the misfortune to land in their basement on the cold steel table. 

“Hey, Herbert.”

“Hello Daniel.”

He didn’t try to sound so cold, but the words came out acidic. To be fair, he wasn’t trying to sound like he was greeting his lover back from work. 

-

Daniel gestured at the plate of pasta and veggies in his hand that Herbert didn’t notice until just then. He was too busy concentrating on staring at the floor by Daniels feet. He wasn’t good at making eye contact with Dan being no exception, but the other man understood. 

He has an autistic sister and he had plenty of experience, so few of Herberts quirks were too surprising to him. He watched his roommate stare into the cement floor and start to breathe through his mouth. It wasn’t strange for Herbert to act like he was nervous and he usually wasn’t regardless, but he could feel a sort of tension in the air. 

“I made you some dinner,”

The man kept looking at the ground.  
“I’m not all that hungry.”  
Dan sighed. Here we go again.  
“When did you eat last?”  
“Last night.”  
The last time Daniel forced him to eat. This made him frown. Not out of annoyance, but now concern. 

Dan doesn’t like how Herberts been acting the past few days, after all he truly does care for the other man.  
Another man.  
Dan was genuinely afraid the first time he realized he might’ve had feelings that surpassed just platonic ones for his roommate. 

It was the incident with the Dean in the morgue when it happened. He shrank into himself on the ground and his thousand yard stare wasn’t interrupted even by the sound of Herbert walking briskly past him to the other side of the room. 

What did shock him was when he felt the man crouch over him, gently dropping a blanket on top of him and actually holding him. He didn’t say anything, there weren’t any coos of comfort and reassurance but he didn’t expect that. He was however not expecting this either, and in a way this was even bigger. 

He remembers the first time he met Herbert and watching him brush past his outstretched hand instead of shaking it. Now Herberts kneeling over him and gently pressing himself against him with his hands gently grasping at him and for the first time in his entire life he feels it.  
He feels a sense of protection and comfort that a woman could never give him.  
He feels warmth pool in his chest for a fraction of a second before it’s replaced with ice.  
Did he just feel affection towards Herbert West? 

Is he attracted to him? Is it possible he is? 

He’s straight.  
At least Dan thought he was until before the event. If he wasn’t straight, why was his bed the home of many passionate endeavors with several women? Why would he be so concerned with how the ladies he’s dated feel about him? Why would he be so willing to have sex with women in the first place?

Daniel failed to realize at first that he could infact be sexually attracted to both men and women. 

Even when he did, he still didn’t want to accept it. 

In fact, he tried not to for the longest time. Some things will bubble to the surface no matter what however, and like a buoy in the water, the harder you try to keep something from surfacing the stronger it’ll fight to. 

“Could you come upstairs and eat with me?”

Herberts fingers started to flick at his side. He stims when he’s nervous, agitated, or overwhelmed Dan came to notice. He didn’t know which he was at the moment. 

What shocked him was that Herbert got up after a minute of silence and looked at him, waiting for him to walk upstairs himself so he could follow. Maybe he was too tired to argue today.


End file.
